Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam [Revised] 1845112571, 9781845112578

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Sausalito Public Library

GILLES KEPEL

$29.95

As we confront the threat of terrorism to our lives and liberties, Professor Gilles Kepel helps us make sense of the ominous reality of jihad today. Beginning in the early 1970s, Islamist militants revolted against the regimes in power through¬ out the Muslim world and exacerbated political conflicts everywhere. Their jihad, or “holy war,” aimed to establish a global Islamic state based solely on a strict interpretation of the Koran. Religious ideology proved a cohesive force, gath¬ ering followers from students and the young urban poor to middle-class professionals. After an initial triumph with the Islamic Revo¬ lution in Iran, the movement waged jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, pro¬ claiming a doctrine of extreme violence for the first time. By the end of the 1990s, the failure to seize political power elsewhere led to a split in the movement: moderates developed new concepts of “Muslim democracy’ while extrem¬ ists resorted to large-scale terrorist attacks around the world.

Jihad is the first extensive, in-depth attempt to follow the history and geography of this disturbing political-religious phenomenon. Fluent in Arabic, Kepel has traveled through¬ out the Muslim world, gathering documents, interviews, and archival materials inaccessible to most scholars, in order to give us a com¬ prehensive understanding of the scope of Islamist political movements, their past and their present.

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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/jihad00gill_0

JIHAD

GILLES KEPEL

JIHAD THE TRAIL OF POLITICAL ISLAM

Translated by Anthony F. Roberts

THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts 2002

Sausalito Public Library

Copyright © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Originally published as Jihad: Expansion et Declin de Vlslamisme ©Editions Gallimard, 2000 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress 0-674-00877-4

In memory of Michel cTHermies master friend

Acknowledgments

This book is the result of more than five years’ research, the greater part of which was made possible by a grant from the Fondation SingerPolignac. I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to those who conferred this grant, as well as to Mr. Jean-Pierre Machelon, the former assistant director of the Departement des Sciences de FHomme et de la Societe at the CNRS, for his trust in me and for his invaluable advice. In the course of my travels, which led me from Indonesia to the conti¬ nent of America, I enjoyed the hospitality of many different institu¬ tions, notably that of the French research centers in Tehran (IFRI), Tashkent (IFEAC), Amman (CERMOC), and Cairo (CEDEJ); these I would like to thank, as well as the cultural sections of the French embassies in Algeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, and Sudan, who, by inviting me to hold conferences in their coun¬ tries, also made it possible for me to pursue my studies in situ. Like¬ wise, the Abdulaziz Foundation in Casablanca, the Bouabid Founda¬ tion in Rabat, the Codesria in Dakar, the Inesg and the Ena in Algiers all furnished me with forums in which to discuss the different themes of my work. Those themes first emerged during my tenure as visiting professor at New York University and Columbia University, and I am deeply grateful to Richard Bulliet, Robert Paxton, and Martin Schain and for their invitation to fill this post. Likewise, Leonard Binder at the Univer¬ sity of California (UCLA) encouraged me to give form to my ideas, and his rigorous and stimulating critique was of immense value to me.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to him for having published an article that would become the basis for the present work, and to Abdou Filali Ansari and Hassan Aourid, who brought out an Arabic version of it. I also owe an incalcu¬ lable debt to the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques for the use of its excellent library and for the kindness and patient assistance of its staff, and above all to the students of the Programme Doctoral sur le Monde Musuman, who in the course of their seminars had to en¬ dure the various phases of my projects development and who re¬ sponded by enriching it with suggestions and critiques drawn from their own experience. Other colleagues and friends who reviewed my work and so gener¬ ously sacrificed their time and energy to help me understand situations that I myself had difficulty mastering are too numerous to mention in¬ dividually. Nevertheless, I would like to acknowledge my great debt to them all, especially Mahmoud Azab, Xavier Bougarel, David Camroux, Andree Feillard, Nilufer Gole, Ibrahim Gharaibeh, Ruth Grosrichard, Mohammed Hikam, Enes Kari